A Nation on Paper

Making a State in the Republic of Biafra

Bibliographic Data

ID2109207
AuthorsSamuel Fury Childs Daly (0000-0002-5475-1534, Duke University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume62
Issue4
Pages868-894
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417520000316
OpenAlexW3091289160
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited97

What role did law play in articulating sovereignty and citizenship in postcolonial Africa? Using legal records from the secessionist Republic of Biafra, this article analyzes the relationship between law and national identity in an extreme context-that of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). Ideas about order, discipline, and legal process were at the heart of Biafra's sense of itself as a nation, and they served as the rhetorical justification for its secession from Nigeria. But they were not only rhetoric. In the turmoil of the ensuing civil war, Biafra's courts became the center of its national culture, and law became its most important administrative implement. In court, Biafrans argued over what behaviors were permissible in wartime, and judges used law to draw the boundaries of the new country's national identity. That law played this role in Biafra shows something broader about African politics: law, bureaucracy, and paperwork meant more to state-making than declensionist views of postcolonial Africa usually allow. Biafra failed as a political project, but it has important implications for the study of law in postcolonial Africa, and for the nation-state form in general

Citizenship · Civil law (Civil law) · Comparative law · Context (archaeology) · Geography · National identity · Political science · Politics · Public law · Secession · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law

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